Acoustic characteristics of vowels in two Totonacan languages

Abstract

This study examines the acoustics of vowels from two Totonacan languages, Upper Necaxa Totonac (UNT) and Huehuetla Tepehua (HT). Both languages have five-vowel systems consisting of the qualities /aeiou/ as well as phonemic quantity distinctions (short, long), and lexical stress. In addition, UNT makes use of contrastive phonation on vowels, while HT vowels may be produced with allophonically non-modal phonation when adjacent to glottalic segments and glottal stops. Data from four speakers (two female and two male) of each language are reported. Acoustic measures are based on multiple repetitions of each vowel in a variety of lexical items, elicited within a frame sentence. Measurements are taken from stressed vowels surrounded by obstruents wherever possible. A variety of analyses are undertaken. Traditional visualizations of the vowel spaces of male and female speakers using normalized F1-F2 plots are combined with comparisons of dynamic formant trajectories across the time course of vowel production. V...